Google employees who work from home could lose money • Hacker News Board

Re: Google employees who work from home could lose money

#181

Post by Necromant2005 » Tue, Aug 10, 2021, 1:23 PM UTC

dsr_ wrote: post #44

Class A office space in Manhattan is about $70/sqft, and the average office employee gets 150 sqft allocated (desk, hallway, conference room, supply closets...) Google is probably 170. That's $11900 annually that they save by not having an employee take up office space. No, it's not fungible on a small scale, but it's certainly fungible on a large scale: reduce your office needs by 100 people and you can rearrange de…

Sounds funny. The real reason for google office is unlimited work, you have food, relax aka dance/yoga classes on site. It’s not necessary to have a home. Home is a rudimentary stuff for google workers. The whole your life is your work. It’s great for a company.

But keep8ng employees on long distance force people to look around: on a local restoran, outside activities, local community. And in one moment person who wasn’t involved at to the life, started to wake up - finding interest outside of work, so the work is not a top priority any more. And it’s bad for a company, because independent people has a decision power in comparison to dependent one

Re: Google employees who work from home could lose money

#182

Post by mumblemumble » Tue, Aug 10, 2021, 1:23 PM UTC

Raphael_Amiard wrote: post #140

boplicity wrote: post #99

The cost of commuting on the environment is extremely high. We should be offering incentives to companies to switch to remote work. If 20% of jobs permanently switched to remote, the impact on carbon emissions would be immediate, and extremely positive.

I'm used to the conversation in here being extremely US-centric, but realize that this is much less true for European cities with good public transportation. I haven't ever used a car to go to work in my life. I'm also very concerned about this better world where people stay home to save the planet. The common level of social interactions in the modern world is already low enough in my opinion. EDIT: It rarely happen…

In the case of the USA, people staying home to work might have a positive impact on social interaction in the long run.

I'm pretty sure a large part of the reason why Americans are so lonely compared to the rest of the world is that the suburban bedroom community model physically divides us and makes it much more difficult to get to know one's neighbors. By the time you get home from work at 6:30 in the evening, it's time to cook dinner, and, once you're done cleaning up, there's not much time for anything aside from watching a bit of TV before you go to bed.

And then the weekend rolls around, and your time is dominated by catching up on all the housework and errands you didn't have time to do during the week because of your long commute. So you're not really getting to know your neighbors then, either.

Re: Google employees who work from home could lose money

#183

Post by UncleMeat » Tue, Aug 10, 2021, 1:23 PM UTC

underdeserver wrote: post #35

brown9-2 wrote: post #11

Will they adjust Urs Holzle’s compensation for working from New Zealand?

Urs is Google employee #8. He is so rich I doubt he is compensated in any way that's meaningful to him today. He probably only works to have a seat at the table and a say in how the future of technology is built.

> He is so rich I doubt he is compensated in any way that's meaningful to him today.

Yet they still pay him a ton (executive comp is public). Weird.

Re: Google employees who work from home could lose money

#184

Post by gowld » Tue, Aug 10, 2021, 1:24 PM UTC

namdnay wrote: post #133

gmadsen wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

wait till the even wider proliferation of offshoring of remote technical roles. The wealth will be even more concentrated, except only the executives, while the workers will have even less

why even less? remote work has been a great boost for lots of workers. I see the effect of it here in Europe, in the past year average hire salaries have gone up by at least 10% due to the competition with fully remote orgs

Even less for US workers, they mean.

Re: Google employees who work from home could lose money

#185

Post by ashtonkem » Tue, Aug 10, 2021, 1:24 PM UTC

mumblemumble wrote: post #156

> One Google employee, who asked not to be identified for fear of retaliation, typically commutes to the Seattle office from a nearby county and would likely see their pay cut by about 10% by working from home full-time, according estimates by the company's Work Location Tool launched in June. > The employee was considering remote work but decided to keep going to the office - despite the two-hour commute. This seems…

It’s also awful timing. After what, 18 months of productive WFH now they want to cut salary?

Re: Google employees who work from home could lose money

#186

Post by bennyp101 » Tue, Aug 10, 2021, 1:24 PM UTC

boplicity wrote: post #99

The cost of commuting on the environment is extremely high. We should be offering incentives to companies to switch to remote work. If 20% of jobs permanently switched to remote, the impact on carbon emissions would be immediate, and extremely positive.

I guess in a purely commuting way, perhaps.

But if 100 employees are all at home and are heating/cooling their houses all with different levels of insulation and efficiency, how does that compare to an office building that is controlled and built to be efficient?

Or the amount of electric they use to power their home workstation and radio, rather than a shared office radio? Or lower power machines.

Or the more shopping trips for lunch or deliveroo orders - because I can't just walk down the road to grab a sandwich.

Or those who now drive or catch the bus/train after work to go for a pint - rather than stopping in on the way back.

I'm totally all for staying working at home, but I do recognise that it's not just the commuting that has an effect here

Re: Google employees who work from home could lose money

#187

Post by UncleMeat » Tue, Aug 10, 2021, 1:24 PM UTC

brown9-2 wrote: post #12

moonchrome wrote: post #9

I mean isn't this just removing comp for commuting ? Assuming you got compensated based on commute time, 2 hours commuting a day does not sound worth the 10% to me - do some moonlighting if you're that bent on converting all your time to money.

No, the article makes it pretty clear that it’s a cost of living adjustment

It is cost of labor, not cost of living. The pay cut to move to hawaii is the same as the pay cut to move to montana.

Re: Google employees who work from home could lose money

#188

Post by eru » Tue, Aug 10, 2021, 1:24 PM UTC

lelanthran wrote: post #143

peakaboo wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not everyone picks jobs based on top salary. I wouldn't work for Google even if they doubled my salary.

> Not everyone picks jobs based on top salary. I wouldn't work for Google even if they doubled my salary. So? I don't really like this kind of non-response response. It's like the guy who joins every conversation to point out that they don't, in fact, own a TV (Onion article, look it up). I mean, sure, there are people who have enough that they won't take a new job for double the money, but they are so few and far be…

You can interpret the comment you are replying to a bit more charitably.

Basically, people have concerns other than money. And on the margin, those concerns make differences. (Just like on the margin, extra dollars also add up. Even if the impact of any one extra dollar is very _marginal_.)

Re: Google employees who work from home could lose money

#189

Post by textbookrental » Tue, Aug 10, 2021, 1:24 PM UTC

It was always a HN mantra that one got paid for the value they create. I guess it is more likely that where you sit is more important than what you do.

Also, I see a lot of comments about higher productivity in the office. Google has had record revenue and profits during this time. Clearly that wouldn't be the case if productivity was negatively impacted.

This seems to be more about what's good for managers and less about what's good for the company. Managers usually are incentivized to grow their budgets, not shrink them.

Re: Google employees who work from home could lose money

#190

Post by biztos » Tue, Aug 10, 2021, 1:25 PM UTC

pimterry wrote: post #127

Interestingly, in Spain this would be illegal. After a law introduced last year, long-term remote working (>30% of hours outside the office for 3+ months) now requires the worker and company to agree written terms (who'll pay for costs, how much remote is allowed, what worker monitoring will be used, if any, on what schedule does the worker have to be available, etc). As part of that, there's legal protections agains…

Until recently I had a home-office contract in Germany. The contract gave them the right to relocate me, which seemed like a funny clause 15 years ago, nowadays I might worry about them actually doing it as part of some policy alignment.